Greg Spragg

Greg Spragg is a highly accomplished retail executive with broad merchandising and operations experience. Greg has held senior level executive positions at the Walmart Stores, Inc., Sam’s Club division where he also served on the Walmart executive committee for seven years. While at Sam’s Club, Greg separately led the merchandising/replenishment and operations organizations. He was known for a focus on results, leading process transformation, and his commitment to integrity, service, and excellence earning him the distinguished, Sam M. Walton Award of Excellence. He led successful corporate initiatives in packaging and fair trade through a genuine commitment to sustainable business practices. Prior to his 10-year stint at Sam’s Club, Greg held similar senior executive positions for Ahold, USA. Greg has worked as an advisor for start-ups, specialty retail, turnarounds, global private equity, consumer goods, product development, and brand management firms.
Currently, Greg is president and chief executive of Solve For Food, an emerging company combining revolutionary food production technology with innovative product and market services.

Jonathan Brill

Jonathan Brill is the futurist at HP, one of the world’s largest hardware manufacturers. He works with the company’s research, strategy, supply chain, and executive teams to develop the company’s long term innovation plan. He has a 20-year track record of developing growth pipelines for clients including seven of the 10 best known brands in the world, which include leading food companies; the U.S. government; the MIT Media Lab; and dozens of startups. Jonathan is deeply fascinated with the science of gustatory perception. His research in this area has been featured in National Geographic, the menus of the world’s leading restaurants and dinner lectures at recent TED conferences.

Derek Dukes

has been a proud OpenTable user since 1999. Derek recently joined the company as director of restaurant product for inventory & experiences. He is the co-founder and co-owner of Lazy Bear, a two-star Michelin restaurant in San Francisco, with Food and Wine Best New Chef winner David Barzelay. Derek helped convert the restaurant from an occasional pop-up to a full-time restaurant applying ‘Lean Startup’ principals. A lifelong product designer, Derek started his career in product management at Yahoo! from 1995-2005; founded a couple of startups, one of which sold to Google in 2014; and has worked on ad product at Yahoo! and Twitter. Most recently, Derek worked in startup business development at Amazon Web Services. He has deep-seeded hospitality experience as an employee, operator, and investor. On the weekend you can find Derek in his kitchen trying to develop the perfect breakfast egg sandwich.

Rob Trice

Rob Trice is the founder of The Mixing Bowl and Better Food Ventures. Based in Silicon Valley, he is leveraging his experience in mobile, internet and telecom venture capital to pursue the application of information technology to food and agriculture challenges. The Mixing Bowl is a forum to link food, agriculture and IT innovators. Better Food Ventures makes investments into startups that are harnessing the power of information and communications technology to improve food and agriculture. Rob previously worked at international VC funds, including Swisscom Ventures, SK Telecom Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners, and Nokia Venture Partners (now BlueRun Ventures). Prior to his days in venture capital, he worked at DIRECTV in LA and Tokyo and at a DC-based think tank, The Center for Strategic & International Studies. He also founded the non-profit Corporate Innovators Huddle, serves on the board of San Francisco-based engaged philanthropy organization, Full Circle Fund, and farmer business support non-profit Kitchen Table Advisors.

Greg Dollarhyde

Greg Dollarhyde is a successful, multi-decade veteran of the restaurant industry, and one of the pioneers of the fast-casual segment. Executive chairman or chief executive officer of eight companies as well as former Chief Financial Officer of two publicly-held restaurant companies, Dollarhyde has built teams and led rapid-growth enterprises to terminal valuations of well over $1 billion. He has been recognized on the Nation’s Restaurant News “Power List” of top 50 people for both 2014 and 2015, as well as having received the Elliot Mentor Award in 2015.
Currently, Dollarhyde is the executive chairman of Zoe’s Kitchen (NYSE: ZOES), a publicly-held, 200+ fast-casual restaurant chain based in DFW and acquired in 2007 with equity partner Brentwood Associates. Dollarhyde was CEO of Zoe’s from 2008 until handing over the reins to his COO, Kevin Miles, in 2011 and taking the company public as Executive Chairman in 2014. Dollarhyde is also a Director and the former chief energizing officer of The Veggie Grill, Inc., a Santa Monica based chain of 28 fast-casual restaurants. Dollarhyde turned over the CEO job to his COO in May, 2016 and has led in the raising of more than $50 million in growth capital during his tenure there. Additionally, Greg recently joined the board of Pasadena-based, Blaze Pizza.
Before these endeavors, Dollarhyde was the CEO of Fresh Enterprises, Inc., the holding company of Baja Fresh, a rapid growth, fast-casual, fresh Mexican food chain. Dollarhyde, in equity partnership with Catterton Partners and Oak Investors, purchased the company in 1998, and after spurring accelerated growth exceeding 40% CAGR, sold the company to Wendy’s International for $285 million; more than seven times the original investment.
Pursuing other entrepreneurial ventures in 2005, Dollarhyde was lead angel investor and former Chairman of the Board of Riot Games, Inc., an early stage, MMORPG video game development company that was subsequently acquired by China-based holding company Tencent, which is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise, and is also a founding principal and advisory board member of b Cellars, an emerging Oakville winery specializing in Napa Valley appellation blends.
Having recently retired from the day-to-day CEO roles, Dollarhyde is an investor and liaison to private equity funds, and seeks to support, counsel and invest in entrepreneurs seeking their American capitalist dream.
Dollarhyde has been an alumnus of restaurant concepts that are household names such as TGI Fridays (CFO, Initial Public Offering 1983), Pizza Hut (VP New Concepts, VP Acquisitions), and Kenny Roger’s Roasters (Exec. VP & Vice Chairman). Additionally, he has led regional favorites Rusty Pelican Restaurants (CEO 1990 and CFO 1987) and Country Harvest Buffets (CEO 1995), stewarding the sale of both of these companies to industry competitors.
Dollarhyde is a graduate of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration (BS with Distinction ‘80) and The Johnson School of Business (MBA ‘81), and is on the advisory board of the Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship at Cornell as well as establishing the Dollarhyde Family Giving Fund at the school.

Randy Burt

Randy Burt is a partner in the Consumer and Retail Practice at A.T. Kearney, a global management consulting firm with 61 offices in over 40 countries. Randy is the lead partner for the firm’s Chicago office and the Food, Drug, Mass Retail sector for the Americas. He has 20 years of industry and consulting experience across the food value chain. Randy spent five years at The Nielsen Company, managing operations, consumer market research and client facing business intelligence solutions. At A.T. Kearney, his work with food retailers, foodservice operators, and food producers and manufacturers focuses on growth, merchandising, supply chain, and ecommerce.
Randy sits on the Leadership Council of the Civic Consulting Alliance (CCA), a group that builds pro bono teams of business experts, government leaders, and its staff to execute consulting projects for the City of Chicago. CCA is an endeavor of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Randy holds a BA in Political Economy from Princeton University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and lives in Chicago with his wife and two children.

Thomas Bowman

Thomas Bowman is the chef de R&D at Hampton Creek. He is a graduate of the world’s premier culinary college, The Culinary Institute of America Greystone. With over 18 years of high level experience, he brings a unique blend of science and food to product development. Throughout the years, he has received much acclaim working with some very notable establishments such as Moto, Otom, Terra, Baume & Brix and ING. He is one of Zagat’s 30 under 30, received 3 stars from Chicago Tribune’s Phil Vettel, Michelin bib Gourmand and was nominated for James Beard’s rising star chef award. Since joining Hampton Creek he has developed several successful lines of products and is now helping drive the culinary science aspect of cellular agriculture.

Chioma Ume

Chioma Ume is a design researcher on IDEO’s Design for Food team. Chioma’s work focuses on keeping people at the heart of the design process. Always curious about how people understand and interact with the world around them, she’s passionate about translating people’s stories into opportunities for design. A lawyer by training, Chioma has over a decade of domestic and international research and project management experience working with a vast array of corporate, government and community stakeholders. Excited by the intersection of food, communities and design, she considers it very fortunate that she enjoys moving as much as eating, almost.

Sandeep Pahuja

Sandeep Pahuja brings a decade of consumer packaged goods and retail experience to IDEO. As a business designer and project lead on IDEO’s Design for Food team, he uses human centered design to inform business strategy to help clients build meaningful brands, experiences, and culture in pursuit of innovation. Sandeep has an MBA from the Berkeley-Haas School of Business, where he was a Leadership Scholar and lectures occasionally on Design Thinking. He earned his BA in Economics from New York University. When not at IDEO, Sandeep enjoys basketball, rapping karaoke, and making mean cocktails.

Larissa Zimberoff

Larissa Zimberoff is a writer covering the intersection of food and technology. She frequently writes about the business of food, future ingredients, scientific discoveries, new production technologies, sustainability, upcycling and more. She is a frequent contributor to Bloomberg, Businessweek, and has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired, Fast Company, NPR, Fortune and more. She has a BA in Visual Arts from UCSD and an MFA in creative non fiction from the New School. She lives in New York City.

Gerd Leonhard

Gerd Leonhard is a unique voice in today’s crowded futurist market. Not only does he take a distinctly pragmatic perspective on the future and avoids the pitfalls of prediction for the insights of actuality, Gerd teaches how the entire organization and the complete individual may futurize themselves, bringing together humanism and technology in a singular fusion. An early music pioneer of the internet, Gerd has evolved into an unmissable agent of positive change for corporates and public bodies of every size. His latest book, Technology vs. Humanity, outlines the present world’s most dramatic dilemma. Audiences treasure Gerd for his lucid talks, panoptic glances, his ironic take on events, and most of all his strategic recipes.

Raja Ramachandran

Raja is the founder ripe.io, a technology company leveraging IOT, sensors, algorithms, and blockchain to help the food supply chain achieve safety, transparency, efficiency and compliance. Raja, a serial entrepreneur, was most recently on the founding team and headed product development at R3CEV, the world’s largest financial institutions consortium, to build and deploy distributed ledger and blockchain solutions. Raja has had 20-year career working at Bank of America, Citi, Silicon Valley Bank and Wells Fargo. Raja is passionate about connected technologies and how they can be utilized to revolutionize ways to create a more sustainable and healthier food business.

Christian Palmaz

Christian Gastón Palmaz was born in San Antonio, Texas to Argentine parents — making him half-cowboy, half-gaucho, and eventually 100% enologist and viticulturist. Christian, the son of Julio and Amalia Palmaz, knows every acre of the Palmaz Vineyards property and plays a key role in the creative team behind the wines. Christian gained an appreciation for food and fine wine early in his youth. He is a graduate of Trinity University in San Antonio, where he received a bachelor’s degree in business while gaining an interest in geoscience and computer science. His application of highly sophisticated Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in the vineyard gives Palmaz’s winemaking team a better understanding of each unique terroir on the property. “GIS is the future of farming,” he says. “Making good decisions in vineyard management starts with a clear understanding about what’s going on with the vines.” Christian also created the wine industry’s first fully algorithmic fermentation-control system. Streamlining fermentation management via this technology frees winemakers to focus more on creating top quality wine. Christian’s other passions include aviation. He specializes in flying rotorcraft. He lives on the Palmaz estate with his wife, Jessica Louise, and their son, Gastón.

Mark Alexander

Mark R. Alexander is President-Americas Simple Meals and Beverages. He reports to Denise Morrison, President and Chief Executive Officer, and is a member of the Campbell Leadership Team. During his 25-year career with Campbell, Mark has held leadership, marketing and sales roles in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Australia, and Hong Kong. Previously, Mark was President-Campbell North America and prior to that President-Campbell International, responsible for the company’s businesses in Asia Pacific, Europe, and Latin America. Mark has served as Senior Vice President-Chief Customer Officer and President-North America Baking and Snacking, overseeing all of Campbell’s sales teams, including those in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, as well as Campbell’s Pepperidge Farm business. He was also President-Asia Pacific, overseeing Campbell’s businesses in this region, including Arnott’s Biscuits and Campbell’s. Mark’s early roles at Campbell included Managing Director-U.K. and Ireland; Vice President-Soup and Grocery for Asia Pacific; Business Director for the ready-to-serve soup portfolio in the U.S.; and Vice President-Marketing for Campbell Canada. Mark began his career with the D’Arcy, Masius, Benton & Bowles advertising agency. Mark serves on the Board of Directors of MasCo Corporation and is Chairman of the Board of Governors GS1 US. He earned his B.A. degree in economics and political science with honors from Queen’s University in Canada.

Scott Friedmann

Scott is a creative business artist who connects big ideas with brands, products, and experiences. A design thinker who operates at the intersection of business model innovation and experience design, Scott has worked across the globe with some of the world’s most loved consumer brands to develop innovative products, services, and strategies that align with the real appetites of clients and consumers. Helping organizations look beyond their own boundaries to discover new ideas, knowledge, and ways of working, he has managed large-scale innovations engagements for clients that include PepsiCo, Whirlpool, Nestlé, Target, AT&T, Four Seasons, Campbell’s, Cisco, and UnitedHealth Group. Prior to founding Idea Couture, Scott was a strategist at Bain & Company, Head of Marketing for a new age beverage company, Head of Interactive Marketing at Canyon Ranch Health Resorts, and Senior Director of Strategy with Blast Radius (WPP), where he helped uncover business changing ideas for clients in the pharmaceutical, food, travel, and hospitality industries. Scott holds an honors degree in business from the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business and an MA in Management of Hospitality from Cornell University.

Catherine Roe

Catherine Roe leads Oracle Data Cloud’s Go to Market Practice for the Consumer Packaged Goods Vertical. Her teams work with the largest advertisers in the media space driving brand success through best in class data driven targeting, measurement, and custom solutions. Prior to Oracle, Catherine spent six years at Google, focused on CPG Client Partnerships while also pioneering Google’s Shopper Marketing platform. Under Catherine’s leadership, Google established search, display and video as integral catalysts in her client’s digital media portfolios. Her team drove record sales growth, establishing Google as a major digital player in the brand-focused space. Catherine has Digital Media, CPG and Retail leadership experience which collectively bring holistic solutions to her clients. Prior to Google, Catherine drove Brand and Category Marketing initiatives at Pepperidge Farm, BP Amoco and SuperValu. A graduate of Gonzaga University, she earned an M.B.A. in Marketing from DePaul University in Chicago. Catherine is based in Chicago.

James Biber

James Biber and Biber Architects have been producing award winning iconic architecture from their New York Office for more than 20 years. The firm has created projects ranging from private oceanfront residences in the Hamptons to the iconic Harley-Davidson Museum; from the Needle & Button monument in the Garment District to the Visitor’s Center at Philip Johnson’s Glass House; and from the White House Time Capsule to the USA Pavilion at the 2015 Expo in Milan, Italy. Filling in this broad spectrum of projects are restaurants, showrooms, retail stores, schools, libraries, products, exhibitions, streetscapes, and urban design projects spanning the US market. James is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) and a LEED accredited professional. He attended Cornell University’s College of Architecture Art and Planning, graduating with both medals and honors. He has taught architecture to undergraduates and graduate students at Cornell University, Syracuse University, Parsons The New School of Design, and university classes from Mexico to Slovenia. He has lectured widely at these universities, at conferences, professional organizations and panels. Biber Architects have developed a recognized talent for digging deeply into the identity aspects of projects, giving voice to the user, the client and the institution in what is often the best and largest expression of their brand.

Eve Turow Paul

Eve Turow Paul is a journalist and advisor who studies the wants and needs of young people around the world. She investigates the latest research in psychology, sociology, anthropology, speaks to thought-leaders and interviews people of the Millennial and Gen Z generations to gain a better understanding of their anxieties, hopes and passions. She then looks at how individuals soothe themselves and fulfill many of their needs through food culture, whereyoung people overwhelmingly spend their discretionary incomes. Eve is the author of A Taste of Generation Yum: How the Millennial Generation’s Love for Organic Fare, Celebrity Chefs and Microbrews Will Make or Break the Future of Food. Today, Eve utilizes her years of empirical research to advise Fortune 500 companies, start-ups and independent entrepreneurs on how to connect with and better serve Millennials.

Amy Shipley

Amy Shipley, with more than 20+ years of experience, Amy is a global food-marketing specialist with a flair and passion for developing dynamic communication programs and culinary experiences for some of the nation’s most prestigious brands, restaurant chains, and U.S. commodities. She joined SRG in 2015 as a managing director to help further develop the extensive B2C and B2B food practice. Her relationships in the close-knit food community run deep, including media, agricultural and culinary thought leaders, chefs, food scientists, and retailers. Most recently, Amy developed SRG STREETDive, a proprietary culinary immersion and ideation think tank for food professionals and their customers, designed to identify new trends from a street view and stimulate fresh thinking in R&D. A strong believer of integrated marketing solutions, Amy has extensive expertise in strategic planning, branding, consumer and trade advertising, public relations, culinary innovation, media planning, event marketing, sales support, trend tracking, and producer–grower communications. Her expertise spans both CPG, foodservice brands and agricultural commodities, including work with Potatoes USA, Avocados From Mexico; Campbell’s; Land O’ Lakes; Ardent Mills; Subway International; On the Border; Diamond Crystal Brands; JBS Foods; National Cattlemen’s Beef Association; Perdue; Dreyer’s/Häagen-Dazs; ConAgra Foods; Solae; California Milk Advisory Board; Sugar Foods; StockPot Soup; Almond Board of California; Paramount Farms; Instill Corporation; Pepsico; Trinchero Family Estates; Ventura Foods; Olam International; and non-food companies, such as Chase Card Services and credit card giant Visa U.S.A. Prior to SRG, Amy was a Senior Vice President with Ketchum/San Francisco, a global communications firm. Amy currently serves on the Women’s Council at the Leeds School of Business at University of Colorado, was named a Fellow at the Culinary Institute of America, serves on the Board of the Ann Cooper Foundation, and was president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council (IFEC). She has won numerous advertising, public relations, and marketing awards, including PRSA Silver and Bronze Anvils, ADDY Awards, National Agri-Marketing Awards, and Mercury Awards. Amy resides in Boulder, Colorado, named the “Foodiest Town in America” by Bon Appetit magazine, with her husband and two children.

Layla Shaikley

Layla Shaikley’s resume reflects her dynamic personality—she was a NASA intern, cofounder of TEDxBaghdad, and most recently co-founder of Wise Systems. Wise Systems is a venture- backed, MIT-spinout software company that makes realtime routing decisions for enterprises delivering goods and services. Layla’s venture-backed company is routing vehicles for a variety of Fortune 500 companies and has been a successful example of a startup breaking into the world of enterprise.

Matt Rothe

Matt Rothe is a co-founder of the FEED Collaborative at Stanford where he is an educator-practitioner in design thinking and food system innovation. Matt also runs a boutique consulting practice focused on innovation and executive training. Prior to becoming a designer, Matt was a fellow in residence at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, director of Stanford’s Sustainable Food Program, and an operations executive at both Attune Foods and Niman Ranch. An ironic launching pad for his career in sustainable food, Matt was raised on a 10,000 acre conventional corn farm on the plains of Colorado. Matt earned a BA in Environmental Earth Science from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford. When not dusting his diplomas, he can be found with a full belly at the Stanford Community Farm, or making art in his garage.

Will Rosenzweig

William Rosenzweig is an internationally recognized entrepreneur and educator and an avid gardener. Will has spent over 25 years cultivating thriving startups while teaching and mentoring mission-driven entrepreneurs around the world. Will serves as a Senior Advisor to Generation Investment Management, a public and growth equity practice chaired by Al Gore. Will was founding CEO (and Minister of Progress) of The Republic of Tea, an award-winning specialty tea company that is credited with creating the premium tea category in the United States. As an entrepreneur and investor, he has been involved in over forty purposeful ventures including Odwalla, LeapFrog, and Revolution Foods. Will is co-author of The Republic of Tea: How an Idea Becomes a Business, which was named one of the 100 Best Business Books of All Time. His work has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, Sound Money, Business Week, USA Today, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Will has served on the professional faculty of the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley, since 1999 where he is a Social Impact Fellow; there, he initiated and taught the first MBA courses in Social Entrepreneurship and Social Venture Development. Will was a co-founder of Haas’s Center For Responsible Business and the Global Social Venture Competition, which has expanded to include more than 40 partner universities. He has been a Price Kauffman Fellow and a visiting faculty member at London Business School and has lectured extensively at leading schools across the country. Will currently leads Food Venture Lab, a cross-disciplinary graduate innovation course, and Edible Education 101, one of the Berkeley campus’s most popular undergraduate electives focused on food systems and ethics. The course is live-streamed globally and has been led in past years by Alice Waters, Mark Bittman, and Michael Pollan. Will is also co-founder and managing partner of Physic Ventures, the first venture capital firm dedicated to investing in keeping people healthy, where he has supported innovative early stage companies including Pharmaca, Novomer, Gazelle, Yummly, EnergyHub, Watersmart and GoodGuide. From 2000 to 2004, Will was a team member for the Rockefeller Foundation’s ProVenEx Fund, the first foundation-sponsored impact investment vehicle seeking double bottom line returns in for-profit businesses. Will was co-author of the Double Bottom Line Project, seminal work that defined the methodology for measuring non-financial returns in growth ventures. Will was honored with the 2010 Oslo Business for Peace Award, which represents “the highest distinction given to a businessperson for outstanding accomplishments in the area of ethical business.” He was the only American selected among seven global honorees by a committee of Nobel Laureates. In 2013-14 Will served as chairman of the Vitality Institute Commission, a national effort focused on promoting health and wellbeing and preventing chronic disease. In 2015, he founded and was named Dean of The Food Business School at The Culinary Institute of America and in 2016, he was named one of seven people shaping the Future of Food by Bon Appetit magazine.

Nell Putnam-Farr

Nell Putnam-Farr is a postdoctoral researcher at Yale School of Management, researching how framing and contextual cues impact decision making and satisfaction. At Yale, she works closely with the faculty and partners of the Yale Center for Customer Insights, looking for ways to apply consumer decision making insights to help nudge people toward better financial and physical well-being. She has worked with global companies in the food and beverage, wellness, and retirement planning industries, with a common goal of understanding how to motivate difficult behaviors over the long term. She received her PhD and MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and her BA with Honors in Economics from Williams College. Before coming to academia to study consumer behavior formally, she spent several years working for a hedge fund being fascinated and frustrated by the psychology of investing behavior.

Shawn Parr

Shawn Parr, as the Guvner and CEO of Bulldog Drummond, Shawn is responsible for strategically directing each of Bulldog’s key engagements, ensuring there’s an “Uncommon Sense” methodology at the center of everything the company does. This approach maintains that the biggest opportunities can be realized, and the most complex challenges solved, by using a powerful combination of simplicity, common sense and determination. He brings twenty-plus years of innovation, design, brand and business-building experience to companies from Fortune 500s to purpose-driven startups. Shawn helps leadership teams transform large, multinational companies and passionate entrepreneurs launch new companies, products and brands. He has worked with executive teams at companies including Adidas, Bolthouse Farms, Clover of Sonoma, Diageo, Eddie Bauer, Heineken, H&R Block, IDEO, Kashi, MTV, Mattel, Nike, Petco, PIRCH, Starbucks, Samsung, Taco Bell, Tata Harper, WD-40, Westfield and World Vision among many others. Following a life-changing trip to Malawi in March of 2004, Shawn has become committed to finding creative and sustainable ways to make a measurable difference in the world by helping people and companies realize their full potential. He sits on the boards of The Honest Kitchen and Kitchens for Good, the advisory boards of FEED Projects and International Farming, is the co-founder of YouSchool and Y-Malawi? and a faculty member of The Honor Foundation. He writes for Fast Company, PSFK and is a sought-after speaker. Shawn lives in San Diego with his wife and three children, is a dawn patrol surfer, wanna-be photographer and avid cultural voyeur.

Jerold Mande

Jerold mande is Professor of the Practice at the Friedman School of Nutrition where he is leading an initiative on advocacy, food policy change, and public health impact. Mr. Mande understands that just supplying people with the right nutrition information is not enough to ensure a healthy public. Beyond issues of personal responsibility, real change in public health requires changing our food environment.Mr. Mande brings a wealth of experience in public health and nutrition to the job. In 2009 he was appointed by President Obama and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack as Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety, and after two years transitioned to focusing on making our national feeding programs healthier. Before that, he was an associate director at the Yale Cancer Center, and on the faculty at the Yale School of Medicine. Earlier in his career, as senior advisor to the commissioner of FDA, he helped shape national policy on nutrition, food safety, and tobacco and led the design of the Nutrition Facts label that now appears on virtually all packaged foods. Following his tenure at FDA, Mr. Mande served on the White House staff as a health policy advisor, and was deputy assistant secretary for occupational health at the Department of Labor. He began his career as a legislative assistant for Al Gore in the U.S. House and Senate, managing Gore’s health and environment agenda. Among his achievements is the Presidential Award for Design Excellence for his work on the Nutrition Facts food label.

Mike Lee

Mike Lee is the founder of Studio Industries, a food product design & innovation studio, and the Future Market, a futurist food lab that explores what our food system could look like in the year 2065 through pop-up experiences and conceptual product prototypes. Mike is also co-founder of Alpha Food Labs, an Innovation Lab for next-gen food startups and corporations building products that are better for by People, Planet, and Profit.Mike’s experience in food design & innovation has covered a wide range over the past 10 years. Prior to Studio Industries & The Future Market, Mike led product development initiatives on the Innovation & New Ventures team at Chobani. At Chobani, Mike focused on building out the Greek Yogurt maker’s savory product platform (Chobani Meze) and drove the product design process from research, insights and ideation, to food, flavor and packaging development, and then finally to business planning and production. Mike is the grandson and son of Chinese restaurant owners in Detroit and was raised in those kitchens and dining rooms. He was trained in Business at the University of Michigan and Design at the Parsons School of Design. He now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Matthew Lange

Matthew Lange, PhD — well versed in food, biological, and health sciences as well as cutting-edge food, beverage, information, and education technologies — guides teams toward designing and implementing knowledge environments the enable end-users to make new and insightful discoveries, create new products, and improve human living conditions. In addition to teaching Food Product Innovation and Development, a capstone class for Food Science seniors at UC Davis, Matthew publishes, teaches, and consults internationally on strategies and conceptual models for enterprise and industrial-scale within infrastructures in the realms of agriculture, food, diet, health, and knowledge. As Associate Director of the UC Davis Initiative for Wireless Health and Wellness and the Principle Investigator for International Center for Food Ontology Operability Data and Semantics (IC-FOODS) at UC Davis, Matthew is leading efforts to build the semantic and ontological underpinnings for the emerging Semantic Web and Internet of Food. The Semantic Web and Internet of Food hold promise to fundamentally alter the way we produce, process, deliver, and consume food. This initiative is giving rise to ecosystems of next-generation knowledge tools that lower technical innovation barriers for the creation of novel, traceable, and ecologically-friendly foods, products, medicines, and lifestyle regimens that are precisely personalized for health and delight yet aggregatable for population and market analyses.

Beth Kowitt

Beth Kowitt is a senior writer for Fortune, where she primarily covers the business of food. She has written cover stories on Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, McDonald’s, and the “War on Big Food.” She is a winner of the Front Page Award for Business Journalism from the Newswomen’s Club of New York, the New York Press Club’s food writing magazine award, and the NYSSCPA Excellence in Financial Journalism Award for beat news reporting. Beth, who joined Fortune in 2008, is also a co-chair of Fortune MPW Next Gen. She has a BA degree in sociology and English from Bowdoin College and an MS degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She and her husband, photographer Karsten Moran, live in New York City.

Caleb Harper

Caleb Harper is the principal investigator and director of the Open Agriculture (OpenAG) Initiative at the MIT Media Lab. He leads a diverse group of engineers, architects and scientists in the exploration and development of future food systems. Caleb’s research focuses in the areas of control environment design, actuated sensing, control automation and data-driven resource, energy, and biologic optimization. His group is developing an open-source agricultural hardware, software, and data common with the goal of creating a more agile, transparent, and collaborative food system.
Caleb is a National Geographic explorer and a member of the World Economic Forum (WEF) New Vision for Agriculture Transformation Leaders Network. His work has been featured by TIME, WIRED, The Economist, IEEE, World Urban Forum (WUF), USAID, and TED. Prior to joining the Media Lab in 2011, Caleb worked professionally as an architect designing and developing data centers, health care, and semi-conductor fabrication facilities. Additionally, he has consulted with multiple international development agencies, including USAID, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and the Delhi Development Authority on high-density urban development projects.

Danielle Gould

Danielle Gould is the founder of Food+Tech Connect, the site of record and world’s largest community for food tech and innovation. Food+Tech Connect’s newsletter, website, events and consulting help entrepreneurs, executives and investors transform the food industry. Since 2010, Danielle has been the leading voice for leveraging new technology, investment and business models to create a better food future. She is also a founding member of the Culinary Institute of America’s Menus of Change® Sustainable Business Leadership Council, a member of the Google Innovation Lab For Food Experiences, and mentor for AccelFoods and Food-X. In 2015, Danielle was named one of the Most Innovative Women in Food by Fortune and Food & Wine.

Victor Friedberg

Victor Friedberg is co-founder of Seed 2 Growth (S2G) Ventures, founder and chairman of FoodShot—MoonShots for Better Food, and executive chairman of Lavva. Victor has been at the forefront of innovation, global development, and sustainability for over 20 years. As co-founder of S2G Ventures, he has been a principal force in developing the S2G mission, culture, strategy, and team. As managing director, Victor led the S2G investments into Beyond Meat, sweetgreen, Ripple, Maple Hill Creamery, Apeel Science, Ataraxis. FishPeople, and Lavva. FoodShot, Moonshots For Better Food, is an innovative grand challenge and investment platform with partners Rabobank, Armonia, Generation Investment Management, and The Stone Barns Center For Food and Agriculture. In 2016, Victor was named by Forbes as one of the top 25 deal-makers in consumer products. He also serves on the Governor’s Advisory Council for Innovation and Technology. Prior to S2G, Victor co-founded and was executive director of LAUNCH, an innovation accelerator involving the U.S State Department, Nike, and others, and he was an executive director at WIRED. As a tech entrepreneur, Victor was co-founder of the pioneering social media platform KODE.

John Foraker

John Foraker is the cofounder and chief executive of Once Upon A Farm, a company on a mission to build a purpose driven brand focused on reinventing a number of kid-food categories in the U.S. toward better health and nutrition, while driving significant positive social and environmental impact. Prior to joining his new startup, John spent more than 30 years in the natural and organic food industry running businesses with a sharp focus on sustainability and social responsibility. John was the longtime leader of Annie’s, Inc., a leading natural and organic food brand, from 1999 to 2017. As chief executive of Annie’s, he took the company public in 2012 under the symbol BNNY before General Mills acquired the business in 2014 for $820 million. For the following three years, John ran the Annie’s operating unit and also advised General Mills’ small business incubator 301, Inc. He was recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® 2015 in Northern California. In August 2017, he transitioned into a new role as chairman of the Bunny, where he continues to work with General Mills to drive leadership in company culture, organic and regenerative agriculture, and strategy support. Foraker received a B.S. in agricultural economics from UC Davis and an MBA from UC Berkeley.

Kyle Connaughton

Kyle Connaughton is the Chef-Owner of SingleThread a farm, restaurant and inn located in Healdsburg, California as well as Co-Founder of the Culinary Development Firm Pilot R+D. Kyle grew up cooking in Los Angeles for restaurants such as Spago Beverly Hills, Kishi, Lucques, AOC, and the Dining Room at The Ritz-Carlton Huntington. He attended The Southern California School of Culinary Arts and two Japanese culinary schools before working for the Japanese outpost of Michel Bras, the three-Michelin-star restaurant based in Laguiole, France, where he spent three years. While in Japan, Kyle also worked in several of the top kaiseki, sushi, soba, and izakaya-style kitchens. He then moved to the U.K. to open The Fat Duck Experimental Kitchen with Heston Blumenthal, as the head chef of research and development. Kyle oversaw for five years the development work for the three-Michelin-star The Fat Duck, which was voted Best Restaurant in the World in 2006 and 2007. In 2010, Kyle returned to the U.S. to work on several development projects, including contributing to the Modernist Cuisine book series. Other projects have included program and curriculum development for The Culinary Institute of America’s Culinary Science Bachelor’s Degree of Professional. His book “Donabe- Classic and Modern Japanese Claypot Cooking” was published by Ten Speed Press in October 2015.

Stephanie Chenevert

Stephanie Chenevert is the director of global programs for Google’s world-renowned Global Food team. The Google Food team takes pride fueling the minds and bodies of those behind Google’s innovative products, serving over 150,000 delicious, nutritious, and responsibly sourced meals in 56 countries around the world each day. Through great food experiences, Google Food fosters culture, collaboration and innovation at work. Previously, Stephanie lead Google’s Technical Outreach Programs for the Americas, LATAM and APAC, building Google’s employment brand through hundreds of global events and programs each year. Prior to joining Google, Stephanie was a Management Consultant with McKinsey & Company advising clients across a range of industries on Marketing Strategy, Performance Management and Operations. Stephanie holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University.

Todd Carmichael

Todd Carmichael (born August 30, 1963) is an American entrepreneur, adventure traveler, philanthropist, television personality, author, inventor, husband and father. He is the co-founder and CEO of La Colombe Coffee, one of the world’s leading coffee roasters. Among his many accomplishments, Carmichael is the first American to make a solo trek across Antarctica to the South Pole, on foot unassisted and unaided, capturing the World Speed Record. His near-death adventure was the subject of an award-winning documentary entitled Race to the Bottom of the Earth (2010), which aired on the National Geographic Channel. Along with his many philanthropic projects, he has partnered with The Clinton Foundation and others to open the Haiti Coffee Academy, an institution created to help with the revitalization of the impoverished country’s once prominent coffee industry. Carmichael has been awarded the honor of being named Esquire Magazine’s “American of the Year” and Philadelphia Magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2011 and later ranked #1 by Food Republic for the most influential figure in its Coffee Power Ranking. In 2012 he hosted Travel Channel’s Dangerous Grounds, where his globetrotting adventures in search of the finest coffees in the world are captured on video. In 2014 Carmichael entered the Specialty Coffee Association of America and the Barista Guild of America’s U.S. Brewers Cup competition for the first time and delighted his many fans by winning at Northeast Regionals with a “full immersion - double suspended filtration” method. Carmichael at the National Competition in Seattle, WA, characteristically pushing the boundaries, unveiled his prototype of an experimental brewing contraption, dubbed “The Dragon”, a manual coffee-brewing device he invented, integrating the pour-over concept with elements of the classic siphon, placing runner up. Most recently, Carmichael invented the Draft Latte, a first-of-its-kind, ready-to-drink coffee beverage that delivers the full taste and texture of a true cold latte. In 2017 La Colombe announced that the Draft Latte is the fastest growing ready-to-drink coffee beverage on the market.

Ali Bouzari

Ali Bouzari, PhD is a culinary scientist, author, educator, and co-founder of Pilot R+D, a culinary research and development company based in northern California. As a chef with a Ph.D. in food biochemistry, Ali has helped to lead the charge in changing the way we think about cooking by teaching and developing curriculum at top universities, from ivy league schools to the Culinary Institute of America, and collaborating with the country’s most innovative restaurants including Benu, Eleven Madison Park, The Restaurant at Meadowood, and the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group. For his unique approach to food and cooking, Ali has been recognized as a member of both the Zagat’s and Forbes’s 30 Under 30 lists. His book, Ingredient: Unveiling the Essential Elements of Food, was recently published by Ecco and nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals book award.

Casey Carl

Casey Carl is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of North Coast Ventures, a strategic advising company specializing in the future of retail, brands, commerce and experience design. Casey just concluded a 20 year career with Target Corporation, serving as the Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer for the company, leading strategy, innovation and corporate development, he led the omnichannel transformation of the company, including the turnaround of Target.com, created several new capabilities such as innovation, data engineering and data science, and spent years running large portions of merchandising and operations. Casey is a board member, mentor and/or advisor for several startups, sat on Advisory Councils for Google and the Retail Industry Association, and has guest lectured at several universities on modern leadership and the future of commerce and experience design. Casey was a graduate of St. Olaf College with a double major in Philosophy and History and completed his Masters in Secondary Education coursework at St. Thomas University. He spends his free time with family, traveling, playing and coaching soccer.

Margo True

Margot True has been the food editor at Sunset since 2006. Before coming to Sunset, she was the executive editor at Saveur magazine, and before that, a senior editor and writer at Gourmet. Margo has won several national honors for her writing, including four James Beard journalism awards and two awards from the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals). She edited The Sunset Cookbook (Oxmoor, 2010), The Sunset Edible Garden Cookbook (Oxmoor, 2012), The Sunset Essential Western Cookbook (also Oxmoor, 2012) and was the lead author of The One-Block Feast (Ten Speed Press, 2011), a backyard-farming book based on the magazine’s James Beard Award-winning blog, sunset.com/oneblockdiet. Her latest project was Sunset’s The Great Outdoors Cookbook (2014), an IACP cookbook of the year.

Meija Jacobs

Meija Jacobs sees design as her not-so-secret weapon for creating a better food future. With a background in psychology and advertising, Meija has over two decades of experience helping Fortune 500 companies, start-ups and non-profits design innovative and lasting brands, products and experiences. Her work ranges from designing beverage product platforms that inspire healthy behavior change to building branded experiences and loyalty programs for hotel brands. As a leader of IDEO’s Design for Food team, Meija collaborates with companies such as Whitewave Foods, Suntory Food & Beverage, and The Hershey Company, as well as food innovators and restaurateurs to design a positive and sustainable future for food and beverage.

Hildreth England

Hildreth England is the Program Coordinator of the Open Agriculture Initiative (OpenAg) at the MIT Media Lab. She is a behavior designer and registered dietitian who’s spent the last decade leading innovation and communications projects in nutrition behavior change for the Centers for Disease Control, the USDA, the University of Texas, and the City of Austin. Before joining the Media Lab, she spearheaded the Digital Innovation strategy for the Texas Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and managed the design and development of technology to nudge healthier behaviors in more than a million WIC clients a month.

Hildreth is also an award-winning performer and the founder of HESTIA design lab, and her food design work has been featured at the 2015 Triennale di Milano and in Il Cucchiaio d’Argento. Hildreth has a BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, a BS (Hons) in Nutrition from Texas State University, and completed a fellowship in the 2015 Masters in Food Innovation Program (Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia). Her latest research is on triggering health-positive behaviors in food environments using emotive design language and Calm Technology.

Nicki Briggs

Recognized as one of PRWeek’s 40 Under 40 ‘Trailblazers to Watch,’ Nicki Briggs is a driven brand communications leader and passionate food and nutrition expert. Nicki is the CMO at Lavva, a new whole-food, plant based yogurt. She is also the Founder of Brooklyn-based NEAR BOIL Brand Communications, where she acts as a strategic advisor, board member, and interim brand marketing leader across a diverse range of food, technology, and hospitality Clients. Formerly, Nicki led global communications for Chobani. She’s responsible for building the brand’s voice and played a pivotal role in transforming a once regional yogurt company into a one-billion-dollar brand in less than five years—gaining the company recognition as one of the fastest-growing startups ever. Nicki holds a Master’s Degree in Nutrition Communication from Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

Sophie Egan

Sophie Egan is director of health and sustainability leadership as well as the editorial director for strategic initiatives at The Culinary Institute of America. In this role, she oversees a portfolio of a dozen initiatives, which includes: co-leading projects for a number of key partnerships such as those with Google and Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health; directing programming for four annual conferences; and serving as co-director of the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative, a joint initiative with Stanford University. Sophie is a contributor to The New York Times’ Well blog, and has written about food and health for Time, The Wall Street Journal, Bon Appétit, WIRED, and Sunset magazine, where she worked on The Sunset Cookbook and The One-Block Feast book. Sophie has also worked as a communications consultant for clients including eBay Foundation, Health Career Connection, and The Vitality Institute on its Food@Work initiative. She holds a master of public health, with a focus on health and social behavior, from University of California, Berkeley, where she was a Center for Health Leadership fellow. She also holds a bachelor of arts with honors in history from Stanford University. Sophie is the author of the book, Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2016). Last year, she was named one of the UC Global Food Initiative’s 30 Under 30. (San Francisco, CA) @SophieEganM

Kelly Weikel

KELLY WEIKEL specializes in using her background in psychology to understand the “why” behind consumer decisions. Her focus is on uncovering the underlying consumer needstates and motivations that shape foodservice behaviors and providing insights on consumer attitudes and usage across foodservice products, amenities and brands. Kelly leads Technomic’s Consumer Trend Reports and Access, a series of more than 20 annual studies that keep U.S. and Canadian foodservice professionals up to date on evolving trends in food and beverage categories, restaurant sectors, dining occasions, consumer segments and more. She also works with clients creating multi-sponsored, custom ad-hoc and full-service research solutions and is a frequent speaker at industry seminars and conferences. She holds a BA in psychology from Loyola University Chicago and is currently attending Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management for her MBA with a concentration in marketing and social enterprise.

Greg Drescher

Greg Drescher is vice president of strategic initiatives & industry leadership at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA), where he oversees leadership initiatives for the foodservice industry, including conferences, invitational leadership retreats, digital media, and strategic partnerships. He is the creator of the college’s Worlds of Flavor® International Conference & Festival (now in its 18th year); the annual Worlds of Healthy Flavors, and the new Menus of Change initiative, which are presented in partnership with the Harvard School of Public Health; and numerous other CIA “think tank” initiatives. Dubbed the Flavor Hunter by Bon Appétit, Greg was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America in 2005, was honored with Food Arts’ Silver Spoon Award in 2006, and received two James Beard awards for the CIA’s Savoring the Best of World Flavors DVD and webcast series. In 2008, he was appointed by the President of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine to its Committee on Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake. Greg previously served on the James Beard Foundation Awards Board, and currently serves on advisory boards for UC Davis’ Agricultural Sustainability Institute and Olive Center. In 2011, he was inducted as a member of the Accademia dei Georgofili, Europe’s oldest agricultural academy.

Christopher Kostow

A Michelin-starred chef before the age of thirty, Christopher Kostow takes a thoughtful approach to food drawing upon his own American upbringing and the bounty of the surrounding Napa Valley. Christopher’s cooking focuses on seasonality, utilizing ingredients from the nearby farm that he and his team operate for The Restaurant at Meadowood and the recently-opened The Charter Oak. Christopher, a Chicago native, trained in kitchens far and wide: from a Paris bistro to the Michelin-starred Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier. Upon returning to the States, Christopher worked as sous chef under Daniel Humm in San Francisco. He soon became Chef at Chez TJ in Mountain View, California, garnering the restaurant many accolades including two Michelin stars. Upon arriving at Meadowood in 2008, Christopher maintained two Michelin Stars, was nominated for Best Chef: Pacific by the James Beard Foundation and named as one of Food & Wine Magazine’s Best New Chefs 2009. In 2010, Christopher garnered a rare four stars in the San Francisco Chronicle and was soon awarded the highest ranking of three Michelin Stars from the esteemed 2011 Guide. Christopher is the second American-born chef and third youngest chef ever to receive three Michelin stars. Christopher and The Restaurant team have since retained the three stars from Michelin, as well as the four stars in San Francisco Chronicle. In 2013, Christopher was awarded Best Chef: West by the James Beard Foundation, and honored as a finalist for Outstanding Chef in 2017. Ten Speed Press published Christopher’s debut book, A New Napa Cuisine, in October of 2014, which was soon awarded “Book of the Year” by the International Association of Culinary Professionals in 2015.

Michiel Bakker

Michiel Bakker is the director of global food services for Google, leading its world-renowned Food program, supporting all food service related activities and initiatives for Google’s global community. Michiel’s focus areas include developing new insights and evidence in how food experiences can enable individuals and teams to be their best short and long term, and developing internal and external global partnerships to explore and tackle the challenges and opportunities in the broader food systems. Prior to joining Google, Michiel spent 17 great years with Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. in various roles. Most recently, he led Starwood’s Food and Beverage in Europe, Africa and the Middle East where he drove operations and guided growth and development. Prior to that, he co-lead Starwood’s F&B efforts in its North American Division. Michiel serves on several advisory Boards. He is an Advisory Board member for the Stockholm Food forum EAT, the Sustainable Business Leadership Council for the CIA – Harvard School of Public Health ‘Menus of Change’ Initiative; the International Hospitality Advisory Board of the Hotel Management School Maastricht, the Netherlands and a Board member of the Society for Hospitality and Foodservice Management. Michiel holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the Hotel Management School Maastricht (The Netherlands), a MBA from the University of Bradford (United Kingdom), a Master’s of Hospitality Administration degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (USA) and a Master’s degree in Real Estate and Construction Management from the University of Denver, Colorado (Mountain View, CA).